by JANRAE FRANK
Brendorn looked deeply shaken. "So you ran."
Aejys exhaled and nodded. "I thought – hoped if I could erase my fame by crawling through the mud and sewers – that Margren would be satisfied. That she would leave me alone."
"She was. Until you killed the great wyrm. You will always be the Lion of Rowanslea. She cannot endure that."
"I ran out of funds. After seven years, with six kingdoms between me and Shaurone, I had stopped thinking about Margren. I just felt free. It was good until now. It was a mistake." Aejys pressed her hands to her face, her fingers framing her eyes and sighed, "If I survive my encounter with Farendarc, then I will probably die in Castle Rowan bringing Laeoli out."
"Don't say that. You can't know it."
"Brendorn, I never lie to myself. There are things I choose not to think about and things I choose not to talk about. And there are things I know to the very fiber of my being which I wish I didn't. But I never lie to myself. There is no way that I can go back and not break that vow. Somehow, somewhere." Aejys snorted. "Maybe I'll even want to when I get there."
"Then let us not think about it." Brendorn took the pipe from her hands, placing it on the nightstand. He kissed her with a desperate hunger, painfully aware of how ultimately fragile life was. She pressed his hands to her breasts and lay back, pulling him down on top of her. Passion banished the dark thoughts from Aejys' mind.
* * * *
Mephistis leaned against the mantel above the fireplace with his tall Sharani boot against the fender, letting the warmth rise against him. He favored the Sharani style, comfortable and practical. It was already starting to cool along the cliffs of Dragonshead. The sa'necari prince of Waejontor watched Isranon setting out dinner on a round central table. Mephistis allowed his fangs to descend, running his tongue across them.
The sa'necari necromancers had assumed all the powers and appetites of the undead, adding it to their own native mage powers. In the beginning they had assumed them by rites, but eventually the older lineages began to be born sa'necari for the rites had altered their genes over the successive generations. A branch of crimson candles illuminated the chamber. His sworn mon rarely took blood, preferring actual food. Isranon was the last Dark Brother of the Light, a sa'necari born possessed of a strange ethos, which was why Mephistis trusted him, and him alone, implicitly.
"You don't like Margren, Isranon." He had asked it before, but despite his fondness for the youth, he could not completely restrain himself from toying with him. Isranon hated having been born sa'necari, and the fact that Margren had chosen to become sa'necari through the rites appalled him. Mephistis could see that in Isranon's manner.
Isranon went still for an instant and then resumed setting the table. "I did not say that."
He was a fine looking seventeen year old, already getting substantial breadth through his shoulders, which suggested he would eventually mature into a powerfully built mon. Mephistis knew that other sa'necari noticed him, the burnished shine of his skin and the heavy curling black hair that the youth caught casually at his neck. It was impossible not to. The sa'necari were an arrogant lot, but there was no arrogance to Isranon, just a simple stubborn pride. He held to himself, spoke to none, and went about his business, yet he stole the notice from the others.
Isranon refused to meet his eyes, head high and staring past him, getting that hard, stubborn edge, all pride and stiffness. Because he had never participated in the rites his powers had never grown beyond that of one barely into the first stages of puberty. Instead he carried a long sword and a pair of long belt knives.
Mephistis crossed and caught the youth's chin, forcing his face around until he was forced to meet the prince's eyes. "I see it in your eyes."
The prince had stumbled upon the youth and his sister, who was now dead, three years ago. He remembered the boy, then barely past fourteen breaking from cover ahead of him, pursued by a pack of sa'necari. On a whim, Mephistis had seized Isranon and thrown him across his saddle. He had mistaken him for a lycan because of the way the youth was dressed and the fact that they were on the edges of the lycan chieftain Claw Redhand's valley. Mephistis liked to stay on good terms with Claw since he purchased horses and other things from the chieftain, and thought he was merely rescuing one of Claw's people from some sa'necari with a taste for lycan blood. His senses had quickly told him different. The youth was sa'necari and that intrigued him instantly. The youth was a heretic and Claw had been sheltering him. Isranon had sworn fealty to Mephistis out of gratitude.
"You would be an easy kill, Isranon. You will tell me if one of them harasses you. Tell me that oath of yours again."
Isranon winced. "The Darkness hunts us and the Light does not want us. Better to step willingly into the fires than to live undead. Better to die with honor than to take a life in the rites. Let each mon go to his own path, but these are ours. And these will always be ours, for this is what we were born to. This is the path the gods have given us, for we are the Dark Brothers of the Light. We are the walking dead who live, for our lives were forfeit with our birth. Forfeit twice over for our choice to live as myn, not monsters, though we are forced to dwell among the monsters. Set yourself apart in your words, in your deeds, in your silence – always in your silence, for silence is your castle. Be as still as the deer in the forest, and if you are fortunate the predators will not notice you. For when they notice you, they will eat you."
"No wonder my people killed you all. Well, you are under my protection."
Isranon nodded. "I am grateful, my prince," he said, his voice softening a little.
Mephistis released his chin, satisfied. "Now go on. Margren and the others will arrive soon."
* * * *
Isranon stepped into the dusty corridor just as Margren approached with her na'halaef, Juldrid, in tow. Margren's crimson robe, sashed at her hips in black, heightened the ruddy undertones of her dark skin. She moved with an aggressive arrogance, knowing that only Mephistis could call her to account in his citadel, and never allowing anyone here to forget it for a moment. Isranon wished he could have departed sooner from his prince's presence and thereby avoided Margren. Everything about her set Isranon on edge.
Juldrid, a minstrel before she married Margren, carried her lute at her shoulder in a fine case and walked with her eyes on the floor. She stole uneasy glances from the corners of her eyes, wrapped in a pensive air with her shoulders folded. Juldrid shrank back, half pressing against the wall as if desirous of vanishing into the stone if such were possible when Margren paused to rake Isranon with a glance.
Margren circled him like a cat. "Running away again, half-a-mon who will not step into the dark?"
Isranon went still. He would not bend to her, nor be drawn into her games. The youth reached for the refuge of his people's teachings and closed her out by retreating into the silences.
"Margren, please," Juldrid pleaded softly, sounding torn between fear of turning Margren's anger on herself and not wanting to watch this. She edged past Margren.
"When the rites are complete, half-a-mon," Margren hissed at Isranon. "I will eat you."
Isranon still did not reply to her words. He had lived his entire life in the belief that one day the sa'necari would eat him or ride him into death in the rite of sex and magic called mortgiefan. And he'd made his peace with that.
"Isranon!" Dane Jayce came up to them. Dane was lanky to the point of seeming all legs and arms at times. He was a vampire of one of the lineages called the royals because of their immunity to sunlight and possession of strange abilities beyond those of the lesser bloods. "My lady." Dane gave Margren a curt bow.
Margren threw Dane a contemptuous glare and swept on, taking Juldrid with her.
Isranon started on and Dane fell into step beside him. He liked the vampire better than the sa'necari and suspected that Mephistis encouraged Dane to seek him out. Although it could scarcely be called a friendship, owing to Isranon's general distaste for the creatures of the hellgods, he was reas
onably comfortable with Dane.
There were only a handful of vampires there and the other sa'necari frequently objected to their presence: vampires and the sa'necari being rivals in power. Dane's group had shown up a few months ago and stayed. Mephistis knew them. They were explorers or researchers of some kind, Isranon had no real idea which and no desire to find out more. He kept himself as isolated as much as possible, building a castle in his mind to close out the things he was forced to witness around him. He could deal with it all so long as he did not allow himself to think about it too closely.
"Where are you going?"
"Onto the bluffs to practice and play my flute." Isranon watched Dane's face for a reaction to the last part of his statement. It was a well-known fact that Sa'necari did not like the music of flutes – if Mephistis had told Dane what Isranon was, he should react with surprise.
"May I accompany you?"
"If you wish." Isranon was disappointed with the lack of response, but felt more and more certain that Mephistis had asked Dane to watch out for him. That might even have played a part in his prince's forcing him to speak again the oath of his fathers'. To remind the youth of his fragility compared to the other monsters and thereby more accepting of Dane's implied protection in Mephistis' absence.
CHAPTER TWO. FIRST BLOOD
Aejys woke early the morning after her friends' arrival, shaking hard, chilled, and sweating. Troubling dreams had stolen the rest from her sleep. Each dream had been different, she felt certain, but she could only remember one of them: running through Castle Rowan, empty of everyone save herself; she opened door after door after door and found no one. Mocking laughter led her to one final door. She opened it and there stood her sister, Margren, with a bloody sword in her hand. But not Margren as she had last seen her, haughty and proud, full of hate and anger; it was her sister as a child of seven, sweet-faced and innocent – the child that Aejys had loved so intensely it bordered on worship and whom she believed would always love her back. "It's all better now. I fixed it," Margren told her, beaming sweetly at her older sister. Then Aejys snapped awake.
She gazed down at the sleeping Brendorn, resisting an urge to kiss him or stroke his curly head. Her chest tightened with a wave of aching melancholy. Aejys had not realized how much the unresolved issues of her life had troubled her until unforeseen circumstance brought her face to face with them. It had always been easier and expedient not to dwell on them, to file the bothersome emotional issues away in a dusty corner of her heart, and then get on with living her life. That pattern had worked well during the war years. But it was all self-deception and all the while she prided herself on her ability to be clear and honest with herself.
She needed to rethink her life, but peering beneath the lid of the troubles-box tightened her chest and made her sweat. For a moment she recognized true terror in her heart, and then shame rose and closed the lid. Her mind cleared again as her breathing eased. "Why?" She asked herself, "Why?" Why should the problems of my heart be so much more terrifying than the horrors of the war? She had faced violence and death without flinching, yet the sweetest memories hurt so deeply that she fled them.
Aejys sat there trying to find some way to climb out of her mind, struggling to break out of the painful circling of her memories. If she did not do something now, she would never find the strength to do it at all.
And she wondered if she was just banging her head against an unyielding wall to even consider them now. Perhaps there were alternatives that she couldn't yet see. And each question built into a cacophony of maddening noise, rising into a scream she could not release. "Iiiii," she moaned, digging her fingers into her hair and pulling gently at the roots. "There's so much noise in my head I can't think in a straight line."
Then her eyes turned back to her sleeping lovemate. "I love you, Brendorn," she murmured softly. "I was a fool not to bring my family with me when I left. A fool–"
She remembered a place she had passed years ago where she might find wise council. A little shrine to the God Aroana, whose paladin she had been before the nightmare at Bucharsa Temple. Maybe it was time to start putting her life back in order, to pick up and face the abandoned threads she had left behind in Shaurone. To reweave them if that was still possible – if there was time. She had been so exhausted, spiritually and physically, when she fled her home seven years ago, leaving behind her mates and their child. She had still been ill and weak from her wounds taken at Bucharsa temple, closer to death than to life, when she forced Tag to help her escape, fleeing in the dead of night in a gypsy wagon with an escort of Red Ravens, members of the Assassins Guild who owed Tag favors. Perhaps there had been another way. And perhaps there had not. She would never know for certain.
The wandering years had been difficult, but the jewels and gold Tagalong had sealed into the saddles and the harness of the pack animals had kept them through the first years. It had given her time to stop thinking. Those years were a directionless blur. Her only desire, when she did any conscious thinking, was to become someone else, someone Margren would see no threat in. Then Margren became a blur. Aejys stopped thinking about her, even intermittently. Life started to be comfortable again or was it the first time? Aejys was no longer certain.
Vorgensburg had been good to her. She enjoyed owning the tavern and the inn, drinking and talking and sharing stories with her patrons and guests. She enjoyed walking the quays and beaches or going up the coast by boat or taking the Northwest Road on horseback to trade with the Kwaklahmyn tribes. She treasured the absence of the high expectations she had grown up with; the lesser responsibilities; the opportunity to just be Aejys, not the Lion of Rowanslea. Parts of her, which she had not realized were wounded, had healed.
But she had also slipped unconsciously into some of her old patterns, building a household and taking allegiances, expanding into trade and building ships, considering establishing an estate in the wilderness between Vorgensburg and the Kwaklahmyn lands. Gradually accepting more and more responsibility for other people, those who had become her people. And now the old life had returned to get her as if it realized that now she could not say no. She had to face the things she had refused to face. It was time to go back ... if she survived the duel. And it was time to find out why her god had abandoned her. To find out what terrible sin she had unknowingly committed that had taken the heart out of her faith.
She slipped from the bed without waking him, dressed quietly, strapped on her daggers and sword. Aejys crossed the room to her private liquor cabinet and took out her last two bottles of a rare Faery brewed wine, the best vintage she owned. Tucking the bottles under her arm she eased out into the antechamber. She started for the door, and then hesitated at her writing desk. She pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a quick note for Tagalong so someone would know where she had gone in case of trouble. Then she walked down the hall, slid it under Tagalong's door, and went to the stables.
Gwyndar whinnied questioningly "Where are we going so early?"
The big sorrel equine was a wynderjyn; get of a unicorn sire and a horse mare. He stood eighteen hands at the shoulder, black-maned and haughty. Two other wynderjyn had box stalls nearby, Cassana Odaren's chestnut Ajandar and Tamlestari's blue roan Emrindi. Sharani priests of Aroana bred them in sheltered northeastern valleys of the Mar'ajante of Rowanslea. The temple trained daughters of the aristocracy, those who wished to become ha'taren – paladins – bonded with them, sometimes in very early childhood during a summer of prayer in a sacred valley. To be rejected by the wynderjyn often meant being dismissed from school and sent home as unsuitable for further training. The wynderjyns rejected Margren. Their unicorn sire drove Margren from their meadows whenever she ventured out. And for reasons Aejys could never comprehend, Margren had always blamed her for that.
Aejys entered the stall and stroked his heavy dark mane, scratching around his handspan's length of horn. "Remember that small shrine to Aroana?"
"The one near the falls?"
"Yes,
" She shoved the wine into her saddlebags. "I haven't made an offering or prayed in years. I think it's high time I started acting like ha'taren again – at least a little bit."
"I think so too."
Then she smelled the vomit and whiskey. "Josh spent the night here again? Where is he?"
"Walking the beach. Then he'll go to Branch's. The Shaman will watch him."
"Good."
* * * *
The common room bustled with early morning activity as the hired help prepared for the breakfast customers. Zacham, the scullery boy, his wealth of shiny black hair tousled and mixed with straw from sleeping in the stable loft, shoved a broom that was taller than he was through the common room. He nodded, grinning broadly at Tagalong as the dwarf settled into a chair and drew her feet up.
"Ma'am!"
"Good mornin', kid," muttered Tagalong and flashed him a perfunctory smile before her mouth returned to a glower. She wore her riding leathers and a deep-sleeved blue shirt beneath the jerkin. Her sword rose from her shoulder sheath: she rarely resorted to the blade, preferring the hammer she carried thrust through her belt. A beaded band partially captured her thick, unruly crimson hair, which flared around her plain broad face like a fiery halo. She watched the stairs slapping Aejys' note against her hand. Something was up. Tagalong could feel it in her bones. And Aejys hadn't looked near as happy about having Brendorn back as Tagalong had expected. "No sirree! Ya'r not keepin' me outta this one, Aejys," she muttered to herself.
"Is something eating you, Tag?" Becca inquired, setting a tray of eggs and potatoes, a plate of cheddared duck, curried capons, and a bowl of honeyed oatmeal, swimming with butter in front of her.
Tagalong shook her head at the food, eliciting an askance glance from Becca who knew the dwarf's enormous appetite. "Who's still here? I know Aejys ain't."
"The Ajan Odaren and Tamlestari left about an hour ago to watch at the gates," Becca told her. "Brendorn has not come down yet."